Movie Nation

Ari Aster’s “Beau is Afraid” is an inscrutable thriller scripted and directed with the confidence of a filmmaker whose “Hereditary” and “Midsommer” upped the intellectual ante on modern horror, but edited with the audacity of a Next Big Thing who’s been reading his own glowing reviews.

It’s a cumbersome, ungainly journey through phobias and mommy issues — sprinting out of the gate in the first act, struggling to come to a conclusion in the fourth — a movie whose “Truman Show” ending has a whiff of “Defending Your Life,” with Patti Lupone in the Faye Dunaway/”Mommy Dearest” role.

That makes it a film everybody is going to be talking about, many will try to dissect and few will want to sit through a second time. It’s stress-inducing and patience-testing, an intimate story told in epic scale and at epic length.

But no, you don’t need to see it in IMAX, no matter what the A24 “event” hype.

The brilliant first act throws us into a paranoid’s vision of The Big City, a Heironymous Bosch hellscape straight out of Fox News depictions of New York, Chicago and D.C., depictions meant for rural folks who would never go there anyway.

Joaquin Phoenix is the title character, a quivering mass of insecurities, on medication and in therapy (Stephen McKinley Henderson is his quick-with-a-“script” shrink). And when we see the world the way Beau does, we get it.

He sprints past murderous, tattooed crazies to get to the store or his psychotherapy appointments, and dashes past a street market where assault rifles are sold and surgeons, still in their bloody scrubs, sip espressos and cops draw on any citizen fearful enough to seek their help.

Soul-sucking anxiety is the only sane response to this Kafkaesque nightmare, and that’s how Beau lives — secluded in his beseiged apartment building, looking for some way, any way, to get out.

Maybe that planned trip to visit his rich CEO mother will do the trick, his therapist hopes. But even the “realistic expectations” that his shrink wants him to embrace include a killer caveat about the woman who gave birth to and raised him.

“Do you ever wish that she was dead?”

To make that visit, Beau must contend with increasingly insane notes slid under his apartment door about the “noise” he’s making (he isn’t), notes that lead to the unseen threatener cranking up CONCERT level music that pounds Beau awake through one more miserable night.

He oversleeps. A loony confluence of events conspire to prevent that trip, but that’s nothing compared to the guilt trip his mother gives him on the phone before hanging up.

That missed visit drives the narrative, as something happens to Mom and Beau’s efforts to be there for her are thwarted by an accident, other violence, the reluctant-to-release-him religious couple who take him in (Amy Ryan and Nathan Lane) and other detours.

Flashbacks are how Beau shows us how he turned out like this, assorted childhood clashes with his single Mom (Zoe Lister-Jones), nightmares about things he might have witnessed back then and a cruise with her where he meets the first and only girl ever to take an interest in him. Elaine’s tween-aged “Wait for me” also circumscribed his life.

Beau’s odyssey to be by his mother’s side has him chased and shot at, tumble into a traveling theater troupe’s forest-idyll production of a play that seems to be about his life, has assorted testy calls with his mother’s lawyer (Richard Kind) and features fresh injuries, physical and psychological, which are the last things this 50ish sack of insecurities needs.

Phoenix is absolutely perfect in the part, and the casting — up and down the line — is deliciously on-the-nose. Ryan is nurturing until the moment calls for her to snap, Lane is at his most unctuous. Parker Posey plays childhood crush Elaine as a libidinous adult. Bill Hader pops up as a delivery man with bad news and Lupone is as imperious and delusionally martyred as you’d expect, playing the older version of Beau’s archetypal Jewish mother

But the forest idyll manages to be inventive (animation, and amateur theatrics) and a tiny bit revealing and stunningly boring at the same time. Aster gives few sequences much urgency, despite Phoenix breaking into panicked sprints here and there. The “recovery” with the still-grieving parents of a fallen soldier (Ryan and Lane) includes an over-the-top rebellious teen (Kylie Rogers) and one of their son’s deranged comrades, named Jeeves (Denis Ménochet).

The violence, an Aster trademark, shocks and repels in between interludes where we think Beau is getting help, getting answers and might even get better.

I’m guessing the average viewer can appreciate much of what’s going on and maybe even take some pleasure in figuring out what Aster is going for here. But “Beau is Afraid” has an indulgent, opaque air that combined with scenes that go on past their payoff makes it an unpleasant, almost assaultive experience in its violent moments, repetitive and dense in others.

Darren Aronofsky’s equally ambitious “Mother!” was an hour shorter, after all.

Performances aside, there just aren’t enough “Mommy Issues” here to justify the tedium of a movie that challenges you and wears you out but doesn’t deliver a payoff satisfying enough to make it worth this much of your time.

Rating: R for strong violent content, sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language.

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zoe Lister-Jones, Richard Kind, Parker Posey and Patti Lupone.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Ari Aster. An A24 release.

Running time: 2:59

There are some genuine frights amid the gruesome, gory, eyes-averting horror of “Evil Dead Rise,” a reboot of/homage to the franchise that made Sam Raimi and his muse, Bruce Campbell, famous.

Writer-director Lee Cronin pays tribute to that franchise with a chainsaw here, a Campbell catch-phrase there — “Come GET some!”

But I found it a pitiless version of a story that was amusingly cheesy in its original incarnation. Throwing a lot more eye-gouges, impalings, shotgunning and skin-shredding at us seems like overkill designed to make us ignore how heartless and humorless this all is.

A grisly prologue set in a lakeside A-frame in the woods by a lake make us wonder if we’re headed into a variation of Raimi’s “cabin in the woods” narrative. But a few bodies there are but a tease for what came “one day earlier.”

That’s when rock tour guitar tech Beth (Lily Sullivan) peed on a stick and decided the result was a reason to catch up with her much-neglected LA sister Ellie (Alysa Sutherland) and her family.

That’s when an earthquake hits and opens up a hole in the basement of their condemned used-to-house-a-bank high-rise, exposing the old bank’s buried vault. It’s not cash that aspiring DJ-son Danny (Morgan Davies) uncovers. It’s old shellac records, and this creepy old book.

Do we remember our Latin? Or our Raimi?

That would be “Naturan Demento,” “The Book of the Dead,” its pages made “from human skin,” its binding from human bone. And as we all know, all it takes is a simple injury and a drop or two of blood for the book to open, its horrific images to be exposed and Danny’s activist sister Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) to be wholly creeped-out.

Playing the incantations captured on those 1923 discs is what lets all hell break loose.

If only Danny had guessed why a long-sealed bank vault was decorated with crucifixes. If only he’d taken heed of the seal on the crypt where he found the book. If only this story’s theme and morality were more complex than “curiousity killed the cat.”

The creepy, Flatiron-shaped building features flickering lights and soon, an elevator with a demonic mind all its own. Neighbors may be introduced and a family dynamic suggested — Ellie’s husband moved out, her youngest (Nell Fisher) traumatized by the hope that Daddy will come back.

But we know where this is going and who is but fodder for slaughter, even if we can’t suspect how merciless the director of “The Hole in the Ground” will be in taking us there. Tattoo’d punk rock Mommy is who the demon comes for first.

And there’s no talking with “her.”

“Mommy’s with the maggots now.”

Others can make the case that horror shouldn’t let the viewer off the hook, that relentlessness is one way to go to jolt, shock and revulse horror fans.

But “Evil Dead” in the title gives us the right to expect more than just gore.

There’s little that’s realistic outside of this “universe’s” established tropes — the book, the demonic possession, the fact that shotguns and knives and cudgels won’t stop it, but a good wooden door or “Fargo” farm implement will.

Still, the players are good at registering shock, even if their characters are slow to react to threats to loved ones. Perhaps the kids liked Daddy best.

Cronin gives the picture a period piece flavor, cell phones and digital mixing boards, with all the cars coming from the ’80s or early ’90s. Raimi’s famous ’73 Olds Delta 88 becomes a ’90s Buick Roadmaster wagon here.

The only things I found amusing are goofy, perhaps intentional mistakes — a veteran rock roadie calling the ancient recordings “vinyl,” and suggesting she can fix the DJ’s set-up to work after a power outage… by using her AC-powered soldering iron to rig up batteries that mysteriously manifest themselves.

By the time the picture goes “Army of Darkness,” it’s way too late and entirely too much blood has been spilled for any lighter touch to work.

I recognize the effects, the makeup, the murderous efficency and the bottom-line/it’s sometimes scary values of this visit to “The Evil Dead,” a film that was originally going straight to HBO Max. But the lack of fun marks this big screen abattoir squarely in “not my ‘Evil Dead'” and “not really my thing.”

Rating: R for strong bloody horror violence and gore, and some language

Cast: Lily Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland, Gabrielle Echols, Nell Fisher and Morgan Davies.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Lee Cronin. A Warner Bros. release.

Running time: 1:36

All things considered, Ray Romano’s “Somewhere in Queens” is a pretty watchable dramedy despite all the “lows” that hang over it.

It’s low-heat and downbeat, with low stakes and low ambition. The situations are low on originality and the jokes are strictly low-hanging fruit.

“Queens” is about a sensitive New York teen his gregarious extended Italian-American family calls “Harpo Marx,” because the “kid hasn’t made a sound since his baptism.”

But “Sticks” (Jacob Ward), so named because he’s been tall (ish) and skinny most of his life, is a pretty good passing and shooting point guard at his local high school. That’s where he comes out of his shell, just a bit, and the attention of his supportive dad (Romano) has made the family popular at school. Dad Leo may be just another laborer at his father’s constriction business, but this attention’s made him the most “famous” he’s ever been.

Amazingly, nobody ever thought that Matthew, aka “Sticks,” could take his talents to college. “Somewhere in Queens” is about that possibility coming up, a chance to go to Drexel U. in Philly.

Yeah, “one of the recruits got Lyme Disease,” is how Leo puts it. “We got lucky.”

Ba-DUM-bum.

“Somewhere in Queens” a big extended family has built its life around home ownership, a family business that takes in all of the menfolk, big Sunday dinners that are a staple of movie and TV Italian-American families, and events at the local hall for hire, Versailles Palace, because “Italians gotta celebrate every f—in’ thing.”

That’s another characteristic of this tale. Stand-up and belovedly hapless TV dad/son Romano has everybody and anybody unload a lifetime of f-bombs in his starring, co-writing and screen directing debut.

Because Italians and “Queens,” amIright?

And there are secrets. Sticks has a bubbly, take-the-intiative girlfriend (Sadie Stanley) that he hasn’t told the folks about. She’s invited to Sunday dinner, impresses and raises eyebrows. And Mom (Laurie Metcalf, terrific as always) takes an instant dislike to this secret and this girl who must have pursued her anxiety-ridden, super shy son.

Angela has her own issues, hinted at by people who remark about how “your hair grew back, just as curly” and her testy reactions to anything that alludes to what she’s been through.

And Leo? He may be the perpetually-tardy lump at Russo Construction, having to take a back seat to younger brother/foreman Frank (Frank Russo) in Dad’s (Tony Lo Bianco, classing up the joint) home improvement business. But he’s the one their latest hot widow client (Jennifer Esposito) hits on.

There is little here that we haven’t seen before in decades of movies set in this milieu. One new wrinkle has Dad interfering in the kid’s love life. But other than that…

Romano cast within his comfort zone — lots of TV actors (“Cosby Show” alum Geoffrey Owens among them), and wrote what he knows — Italian American shtick.

My recent gold or at least silver standard for this sort of indie (ish) family movie is “Feast of the Seven Fishes,” an even more formulaic Italian American coming-of-age tale with the same sorts of “first in the family to go to college” subtext, but wrapped in a more believable period piece set in the much more interesting and original coal country of Pennsylvania/West Va.

But there’s comfort food value in movies that don’t surprise us much, and that’s what Romano was reaching for here. After all, he’s made a pretty good living finding the funny in low-hanging fruit.

Rating: R for (profanity) and some sexual material

Cast: Ray Romano, Laurie Metcalf, Sadie Stanley, Jacob Ward, Jennifer Esposito, Frank Russo and Tony Lo Bianco.

Credits: Directed by Ray Romano, scripted by Ray Romano and Mark Stegeman. A Roadside Attractions/Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:44

They blow the “meet cute.” But that’s never the actors’ fault, and since the leads are Ana de Armas and Chris Evans and they ARE cute, and we all know they’ve already met with their “Knives Out,” that’s no biggie.

Our story takes over a half hour to set up, which is right on the cusp of unforgivable. And it drifts on after the climax, and actor turned director (“Rocketman”) Dexter Fletcher (he also plays a scruffy “contact”) ought to know when to drop the mike by now.

But that’s quibbling when your product is a big and noisy, scenic and messy action comedy that delivers laugh-out-loud sight gags, punch lines and star cameos — most of whom play characters with all the screen life span of Tom Cruise’s character in “Edge of Tomorow.”

You can’t and probably shouldn’t say this about many movies, but the bad guy deaths in “Ghosted” are often slapstick hilarity incarnate — machine-gunning motorcycling mugs staring in shocked slo-mo as they hurtle past the window of the Pakistani jitney bus de Armas has just used to run them right off a cliff.

But how does a college-educated organic farmer serving the street markets of D.C. meet a C.I.A. agent masquerading as an “art consultant?” At a street market, where she’s trying to buy a houseplant even though she “travels” a lot and can’t offer anything like “love” to it, or anything.

That’s just Cole Turner being instantly judgy. “Cactus,” he figures, suits the beautiful woman whose phone number he would love to get. Something prickly and that can live through her neglect is all she deserves.

Yes, there’s a succulent used as a metaphor, and eventually a running gag.

Sadie sizes-up this good-looking Gomer as a provincial who’s never even traveled outside of the country.

But something makes her serve up that phone number, and then suggest coffee as a first date becomes an afternoon, an evening and even a following morning in our lovely nation’s capital.

He sends her a text or two…or more, the next day or so. His mom (Amy Sedaris) is comforting, his dad (Tate Donovan) thinks he needed to mention he “wrestled in high school.”

Kid sister (Lizze Broadway) is the one who figures he’s blown it, and that he’s been “Ghosted.”

But in the strangest “stalker” via technology turn ever, Cole figures out where she’s gone and figures she’ll be up for his “grand (romantic) gesture” of just showing up in London and tracking her down.

Nope. Following her around just gets him nabbed by bad guys. They think he’s “The Tax Man,” a notorious assassin who must be paid and must have “the pass code.”

The first villain he meets is a Russian who purrs “It truly eees an honor to torrrrture you today” and slaps him because that “hurts me, a leetle,” and “I’m all about sharing the exPERience!”

Borislov is played by that walking, talking “Buster Scruggs” drawl, Tim Blake Nelson, the only cameo I’m going to give away here. And with his amusing arrival, and Sadie’s abupt rescue attempt, “Ghosted” gets up and gets going.

We dash from the Khyber Pass and bazaars of Pakistan to The Arabian Sea, having already been treated to the most scenic spots in Washington (a romantic walk along the Patowmack Canal, a sprint up “The Exorcist” steps) and a spot of London.

The shootouts are staged in an epic, effects-heavy jitney bus vs. pickups and motorcycles chase through that famous pass, in a villain’s lair, on a private jet and in a very distinct sky-high restaurant.

The bad guy in pursuit of the MacGuffin of the tale is played with a venomous French-accented edge by Oscar winner Adrien Brody. His badass/bad jokes henchman (Mike Moh) is the first guy to sing a bit of The Beatle’s tune, “Taxman.”

But of course we hear that again, of course there are romantic montages and action beats set to pop music and of course we never ever really fear for our heroes, because Hitchcock only killed his leading lady once. And that’s the tone here — jokey, on the move, sometimes surprising, violent with a big ol’body count and still not all that serious.

Because no movie which serves up a sea of “bounty hunters” with names like “The Serpent” and “The Grandson of Sam” and played by a lot of people you know is going to be anything but a bloody lark.

Evans, playing a Chris Pine role — a guy repeatedly saved by a more heroic woman — is light on his feet and quick with a quip. And let’s just say that as furious as the fights get, every time “high school wrestler” foreshadowing is made good, that’s a big laugh.

Ana de Armas puts herself in Gal Gadot, Angelina/Halle/Chastain territory as a perfectly credible, adorably pouty action heroine.

And as messy as all this is — it’s more “Bullet Train” than “Extraction,” as far as streaming action epics go — it plays. The laughs land and the crooked corpses pile up and the leads, despite every bit of artifice and clumsiness showing in the “relationship” side of the script (they used Chris McKenna, Rhett Reese and Erik Sommers, but probably needed a good female scripter to take a pass), the leads have chemistry.

“Ghosted” manifests itself as a pleasantly amusing piece of cheese, embraceable for the breezy time-killer it is. But if they dare decide to franchise it, they’ll need a writing upgrade for that to come off.

Rating: PG-13 for sequences of strong violence/action, brief strong language and some sexual content

Cast: Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Mike Moh, Amy Sedaris, Lizze Broadway, Mustafa Shakir, Tate Donavan and lots of cameos

Credits: Directed by Dexter Fletcher, scripted by Chris McKenna, Rhett Reese and Erik Sommers. An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: 1:56

Some movies you want to hug, just to reward how a film makes you feel and what magic it is when a setting, a character, a star and a story sing together in near perfect harmony.

“Cherry” is an indie dramedy with a simple problem with no easy, unconsidered solution, a charmer with a message that could not have come along at a more perfect time.

It’s about an aimless, carefree 20something Angelena, a street magician and balloon artist who lures customers into a vintage costume shop. One day Cherry shows up for work, ducks into the bathroom and pees on a stick.

Our heroine, the leggy embodiment of the “roller girl” in Dire Straits’ famed music video “Skateaway,” is pregnant. Enchante, honey. What can I say?

“Cherry” takes us through the longest weekend in a manic pixie dream girl’s life. She’s fired for being perpertually late and irresponsible at work, can’t reach her “least effective contraception method” boyfriend to get his reaction, and only through begging, lying and imitating a British tourist can she get into the just-closed free clinic to confirm the test.

Right from the start, director and co-writer Sophie Galibert treats this subject seriously but gently. California is still a “my body, my choice” state. But Cherry, given a winsome ditziness by Alex Trewhitt, is plainly not adult enough to make this decision.

“What would you do?” she asks the doctor (Sandy Duarte), who is…pregnant.

The doctor gets it. “It’s not on our bucket list of things to do in life,” not at Cherry’s age and maturity.

Their conversation is professional, compassionate and despite Cherry’s “I just never thought this would be me” cluelessness, touching, even more so in light of American conservatives’ ongoing war on women and reproductive rights.

“Can I see it?” Show her the sonogram. “What’s it sound like in there?”

As light as it plays on the surface, “Cherry” gets at the momentous, wrenching nature of this “decision” right from the start. She’s far enough along that she has just a weekend to decide if she wants to come back and buy a pill.

She has to talk to the boyfriend (Dan Schultz), and maybe to her mother (Angela Nicholas). It’s Mother’s Day weekend, wouldn’t you know it?

But Galibert and co-writer Arthur Cohen’s script teases out the “news,” finding ways and reasons the childish Cherry can’t tell one and all. Her grandmother (Melinda DeKay) has dementia. Maybe she can keep a secret.

Miraculously, granny has great insights to share, even as she doesn’t realize it. First she, then Cherry’s mom give hints of the life paths not taken thanks to unexpected pregnancies. We even meet Cherry’s divorced, struggling and somewhat absent father (Charlie S. Jensen).

Will she tell any of them? Will they break her or our hearts with their take on the real cost of parenthood in a corner of the world where people still have control over when that happens?

Galibert, Trewhitt and a very good supporting cast conjure up a tale that amiably skates through a jolting moment in any life, not just those still figuring out who and what they are and want to be.

The serious scenes are broken up with chuckles as Cherry tries to rejoin the party-entertainment skate team she was in, struggles to keep her secret and strains to find creative ways to reveal it to those who matter to her.

The magic of this light, almost slight film is that everyone, even those who don’t know, have something to tell her, something to teach and something for all of us to consider about the biggest decision anyone can make — parenthood.

Rating: unrated, adult subject matter, profanity

Cast: Alex Trewhitt, Sandy Duarte, Dan Schultz, Angela Nicholas and Charlie S. Jensen

Credits: Directed by Sophie Galibert, scripted by Arthur Cohen and Sophie Galibert. An Entertainment Squad release.

Running time: 1:16

Jason Momoa could be playing the best villain this franchise has ever managed. And they’ve had Theron and The Rock and Statham. And Joaquim de Almeida.

May 19 we finally find out.

It takes a while to get into the screwy rhythms of “Operation: Nation,” a dark and somewhat farcical Polish spoof of the idea of Polish Nazis.

I mean, come on. Historical anti-Semitism notwithstanding, how much do you have to excuse, forget or simply be too stupid to grasp to realize how nuts that sounds?

It’s about an unhappy, aimless 20ish Pole who gets sucked into not a neo-Nazi group, but Nazi Nazis led by his coke-addled would-be fuhrer of an older cousin. He’s a deluded armband wearer who’s taken his name — “Roman” — a tad too seriously.

Straszek (Maciej Musiałowski) is stuck sharing a room with his K-Pop obsessed teen sister, his dreams of “getting out” of sleepy Bialystok torn asunder when he tore up the knee he needs to play soccer. He is trapped in a dead-end job working for a keep-it-all-to-myself parking lot owner with no prospects.

The sports posters have come down in his room. Military ones have taken their place. But it’s obvious he is adrift and unformed.

“I don’t have my own opinions,” he admits at one point, in Polish with English subtitles, or dubbed into English.

Which is why Roman (Borys Szyc) is giving him the hard sell as Straszek comes down to court to pick him and some of his followers up.

Yes, they were throwing a Jew-hating, violence-preaching, white supremacist “Hitler’s 132nd Birthday Party,” complete with a cake with Swastika in every slice, a party which the cops broke up. But the court sees that these idiots can’t draw a legible Swastika, that most can’t answer the question “Is Hitler dead?” or form a coherent sentence and lets them go.

But Staszek might be tempted. Test him by sending him over to punch out a drunken “leftist paparazzi” in the pub.

The trouble is, pretty Pola (Magdalena Maścianica) has just come home from grad school in Warsaw. She mistakes the swing Straszek takes at the drunk for chivalry, and numbers are exchanged.

Pola is the Polish word for “woke” (Obudził) in the flesh — liberal, tolerant, an ally to all the big causes college kids buy into.

Will Straszek follow her down the primrose path to chaining themselves to trees to prevent deforestation (which he envisions the moment he meets her)? Or will he hide his new “gang” from her and join the dunces who try to get attention by going viral burning a homemade Orthodox Jewish doll (it’s made of flame-retardant fabric), who plan “Operation: Bomb a Synagogue” with a code-name that’s a bit of a giveaway, or dream of attacking a Pride parade with “Operation: Blow a Homo?”

Straszek’s parents are MOST concerned that he’s gay. There’s a priest who cluelessly lends the Proud Poles the attic of the rectory as their clubhouse. When they’ve diagrammed their attack on a synagogue on a chalkboard, he’s helpful enough to show the morons how to draw a Star of David. THAT’S what gets his attention.

Director Piotr Kumik and writers Jakub Rużyłło and Łukasz Sychowicz have a seriously topical satire on their hands, with the state of world politics swinging perilously towards the militant right.

Their film is sort of Pythonesque in its attempt at finding fun in the thuggish idiots who populate the international far right. As we hear the group names that Staszek stumbles into on one cannot help but think of the rift between the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea in “Life of Brian.”

But this is much darker, and tone is perhaps the place where “Operation: Nation” falls short. It’s not as scary as it might be, and it’s not as funny as it should be.

Nazis, piled into a Mercedes for a trip into the country, with Roman ruling out this gas station (“No, Israel controls it.”) and that one (“They support LGTBQ.”) until they run out of petrol.

He and his minions can’t get the damned gay acronyms right, can’t construct a sentence that doesn’t have a “blow a homo” gaffe built into it. Some of this is laugh-out-loud funny, but it doesn’t all play that way, despite the witty wordplay.

A real spit take? Roman takes a follower’s head in his hands to give him the key-code for something VERY important. But he’s covering the dude’s ears so he can’t hear it.

That’s seriously stupid. And funny.

I wish it all came together better, this blend of violence (a fight, a riot and a stabbing), first blush of romance, mockery of bigots and the dangerous activities which the law (Straszek’s dad is a cop) isn’t concerned about but only Pola and her pals see as a threat.

There’s a big target here, and a lot of funny swings at it. But “Operation: Nation” never quite plays. Or perhaps it genuinely loses something in translation.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, drug abuse, nudity, profanity

Cast: Maciej Musiałowski, Magdalena Maścianica, Borys Szyc, Mateusz Król and Karol Kadłubiec

Credits: Directed by Piotr Kumik, scripted by Jakub Rużyłło, Łukasz Sychowicz. A Canal+ film on Netflix.

Running time: 1:37

A horror icon is interviewed, and others sing his praises.

June 6, streaming.

“Queens on the Run” is a dainty little Mexican marzipan comedy — sort of sweet in the most predictable ways, lighter-than-lightweight and rarely funny.

It’s a “wives bonding” road picture, a little heavy on the “Thelma & Louise,” pero medio culo, as they say in Olde México, in terms of script and execution. “Half-assed.”

Four bored México City women — three of them in marriages of varying degrees of frustration, the other an arrested development case with a Grindr and pink hair dye fixation, pile into a ’64 Ford Fairlane convertible named “Corcholata” (Bottle cap, amigos!) and bomb off for the coast — to Cancún.

Marilu (Alejandra Ambrosi) has two kids and a distracted workaholic husband who has forgotten their anniversary for four years running. So she’s in.

Famela (Paola Núñez) is more happily married, trying to have a baby and wearing out her husband in the process. He, by the way, is in business with Marilu’s husband/marido.

Glamorous writer Paty (screenwriter Martha Higareda) is married to a famous politician and constantly getting botox and “las boobies” worked on, but now her “chi chis” (Mexican slang for “las boobies”) are uneven. Her husband might be cheating.

And single free spirit Estrella (Valeria Vera) is the one who owns Corcholata the red Fairlane ragtop.

Estrella suggests the road trip to her fellow “reinas”(queens). Baby-obsessed Famela has been equally obsessed with her late mother, and thinks scattering Mom’s ashes in the Caribbean would be just the thing. The other two join in with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

They’ have their first mishap during their first sing-along (Shania Twain, of course), are attacked by a chicken truck stampede during a traffic jam, flash a Jeepload of fetching chicos and make their merry way, even picking up a hitchhiker (Claudia Pineda) as if there’s another item to check off their bucket list.

But we’ve seen the heavy-handed forshadowing, all the TV reporting about the drug importer/gun trafficker named El Gavilán or “The Hawk” (Enrique Arreola) like the song. We know they’re about to cross paths. But we have no idea how ham-handedly co-star and screenwriter Higareda will manage that unlikely encounter.

Somehow, these “queens” have to be put “on the run if “Fuga de Reinas” is to achieve its titular destiny.

The screenplay is cut-and-paste, start to finish, with some of the pastes having little connection to logic. The slapstick is OK, what few instances of it we’re treated to. The “girl bonding” stuff is pro forma, and the perils are poorly handled, at least on the page.

But the players are all-in, right through the “impersonate pole dancers” climax, and a couple of moments deliver giggles. Famela is EVER so irked when El Gavilán and his sidekick POINTLESSLY steal the urn with her mother’s ashes. A deranged car chase with gunplay ensues.

And when forgetful hubby Jose arranges a mariachi band at the last minute to serenade his (missing) wife, and the players are all drunk, that’s kind of funny.

The rest? Kind of off-a-cliff, if you know your “Thelma & Louise” analogies.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, near nudity, sexual content, profanity

Cast: Paola Núñez, Alejandra Ambrosi, Martha Higareda, Valeria Vera, Claudia Pineda and Enrique Arreola.

Credits: Directed by Jorge Macaya, scripted by
Martha Higareda. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:36

The ladies swoon and the clothes, manners and accomplishments make the man as Kelvin Harrison Jr. goes full matinee idol as “Chevalier” de Saint-Georges in a lovely film that is both immaculate period piece and colorfully imagined biography of a music star of pre-Revolutionary France.

Josephe Bologne was the “bastard” son of a French West Indies plantation owner and his slave who gained fame as a fencer, a musician and composer in the last years of the French court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Emmy winning TV producer and director Stephen Williams (“Watchmen”) and screenwriter Stefani Robinson (TV’s “Atlanta”) conjure up a story that’s both amazing and mostly true, tracking the dazzling career of someone whose father’s lone righteous act was recognizing his talent and putting him in an exclusive French boarding school, which gave him entry into the very heights of French society.

“You must be excellent,” the barely fatherly father (Jim High) counsels. “Always excellent. NO one may tear down an excellent Frenchman!”

We see the boy fence and fiddle his way to the top, making his name in both fields and challenging the aged-out-of-boy-wonder Mozart (Joseph Prowen, terrific) to a (fictional) “Devil Went Down to Grenoble” fiddle-off in front of an astounded, palpitating audience of new (mostly female) admirers.

Even Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton, a vision) becomes a fan girl and names young Joseph Bologne “Chevalier” du St. Georges.

“What will you do now that the world is yours, Chevalier?”

But he is black, “mulatto,” and there are limits to his professional life and personal prospects. Marry a black woman and he will lose his status. Cast his eyes at the wrong white woman of his station and he will face the wrath of France.

Professionally, he’d love to lead the faded Paris Opera. Personally, he’d love to take up with the beautifully-voiced beauty Marie-Josephine (Samara Weaving) and cast her in his new opera “Ernestine.” Her stern, military man of a husband (Marton Csokas, fearsome as always), won’t have any of that.

And making an aging opera diva (Minnie Driver, in full Kristin Scott Thomas mode) jealous isn’t a smart play.

Harrison — he was B.B. King in the recent “Elvis” movie — brings a playful, debonnair touch to this character, a dandy who loved showing off his talents and his manners in his fancy blue suits.

The film necessarily over-simpliflies and condenses this not-quite-forgotten man ahead-of-his-time’s life. His reunion with his mother (Ronke Adekoluego) is given short shrift, as are his dalliances in the politics of that day. Attempting to have this story climax during the French Revolution is an overreach, leaving the later acts looking malnourished and playing as perfunctory, soap operatic and incomplete. The last third of the film drags accordingly.

But Harrison dazzles in a vehicle in which Robinson and Williams present him as a real life T’Challa, smarter, more accomplished, braver and better in a sword fight than any white man in his world. His story makes a fascinating reminder of all the history we’ve forgotten, or been made to forget, and returns an “erased” figure to his rightful place as one of the celebrated men of his age, someone whose long and complex story would take a mini-series to be done justice.

Rating: PG-13 for thematic content, some strong language, suggestive material and violence

Cast: Kelvin Harrison Jr. Samara Weaving, Lucy Boynton, Ronke Adekoluego, Sian Clifford, Minnie Driver and Marton Csokas.

Credits: Directed by Steven Williams, scripted by Stefani Robinson. A Searchlight release.

Running time: 1:47